AI in the B2B sales process - thumbs up or thumbs down?

As a prospect — and we're all prospects to someone — what's been your experience with how AI is being incorporated into the sales process?

I'm not talking about automated and impersonal emails, calls, and texts. Those have been with us for a while. And, yes, lots of leaders will guide their companies to use AI to turn those up to 11.

What I'm curious to know is what your experiences have been with AI in "the sales process" after you've reached the point when you're ready to talk to someone.

What's that been like? Thumbs up? Thumbs down?

What the experts are saying

McKinsey published their views on AI in B2B sales in September in a paper titled, An unconstrained future: How generative AI could reshape B2B sales.

They make a very good case for how gen-AI is "...rewriting the rules of sales." They frame the next frontier in terms of Pathways.

• Pathway one: Shifting the efficiency frontier
• Pathway two: Releasing a new growth paradigm
• Pathway three: Radically reframing the modern sales organization

It's worth the read. I'll opine on Pathway One in this post and will come back to the other two in future posts — Part 2: A new growth paradigm? and Part 3: Reframing the sales org.

Pathway one: Shifting the efficiency frontier

I'm mostly good with what they say they see and what it means. I do have some questions and concerns.

1. Resource allocation

GenAI, machine learning, and endless data will combine to help companies to, a) anticipate market demands, b) help sellers focus where the greatest ROI should be and, c) keep the rest of the downstream organization connected and more efficient with operational issues like supply chains, inventory management, and product development.

Thumbs up from me!

2. Reduced need for seller expertise

I'm good with gen AI boosting research speed and efficiency. I get that agentic AI can sit at my shoulder — even take over for me — in qualifying, discovery, requirements gathering, and solution design.

Is that the experience prospects want, though?

How do prospects reward sellers with their trust if AI is doing the heavy lifting?

And, what does it do to the seller's brand if the prospect is kept in the dark and finds out later that it wasn't people they were dealing with so much as it was AI? (Who would lie like that? Come on. You and I absolutely know company leaders who will choose to do this.)

My thumb is horizontal.

It goes up if company leaders authentically create this union of gen AI and sales people to help make sales people better informed and more valuable as a trusted advisor to their employer and customers.

It's thumbs down if this is about a pathway to replacing human sales people.

What? $3 an hour SDRs in other countries are still not cheap enough? Have AI make cold phone calls and handle qualifying, discovery, and maybe the whole sales process to take that selling cost effectively to zero? Who needs people?

Hold up. Let's ask the market.

Is that what you prospects are hoping for and asking for; an automated sales person?

Is that what your company is doing to its prospects?

3. Leverage emotional intelligence

When gen AI automates routine tasks, McKinsey says the sellers they asked told them this would create more time for establishing and building trust. The sellers told McKinsey they could, "...focus on functions that require empathy, deep critical thinking, and complex problem-solving skills, such as serving as customer advocates, supporting clients through complex decisions, and helping customers realize value from the products or services that they're selling."

Horizontal thumb again.

I totally get and am 100% on board with the importance of empathy in every human interaction. (Many of this country's political and corporate leaders seem to have no understanding of this basic human trait.)

My question is simple. Isn't it only a matter of time before AI is capable and corporate leaders decide to assign all of that to AI in the interest of maximizing shareholder value and their own net worth?

Again, I ask you: What do you as a prospect, seller, and company leader want?

It's about leadership

For me, this, as almost everything does, comes back to leaders; who they are as a person and as a leader, what their personal and professional core values are, and what their goals are.

If their goals are personal wealth and shareholder value, it's only a matter of time before prospect AIs are interacting with vendor AIs for everything, leaving little to no human interaction.

You're not in sales? You're not safe. The way AI is talked about, there's almost nothing off the table except the C-suite. Why would they decide to let technology take their jobs unless they're ready to water ski behind one of their yachts full-time. IYKYK

Back to you fellow prospects:

Is this the kind of 'relationship' you want with suppliers? One in which AI takes over more and more of the work and the relationship?

Thumbs up? Thumbs down?